Testing the Waters

My internship is at Kaleida Health, downtown at their corporate offices. I’m in the Human Resources department, more specifically the benefits department. We focus mainly on making sure that all current, upcoming, and retired employees are all up to speed with all their benefits. When I was applying for internships, I wanted to get into a place that was large and well-known in this area. Kaleida is just that. Even though I’m only a few weeks in, I already see how vague my desires for an internship in Human Resources was. It is a much larger field than I had thought, which is great because every day I go in there’s always an opportunity for me to learn something new. At this point, my main goal is just to learn things about the field, get exposure, and see if I can picture myself doing things similar to what I do now in the future once I graduate.
As the days went on, the shifts got easier. Once you get used to your new surroundings the hours fly by. When you go from watching and learning to actually doing the work, it’s easy to get caught up in it. You start to understand how things work, who people are, and what to do in certain scenarios. After my first couple days, I started to really look forward to going in every day (minus the elevator ride. I hate elevators.) It’s a refreshing change of pace. In my eyes, I’m being relatively useful in the “real world” and that makes me feel a little bit more confident about my life after May once my time at Canisius as an undergraduate student is up.
I know I’m still far from where I will be towards the end of my time at my internship. It’s great to see that every day I’m learning something new and, more importantly, learning how to do those things on my own. The second portion of my internship will be a challenge but one that I’m excited about and up for nonetheless.